A Safety Pin can be used for all sorts of things, like to pin a crisp twenty dollar bill inside the pocket of a boy’s white shirt, like my mother did for me the first time my parents ever put me on a train  by myself in 1962.

I was headed to New York City from Savannah, Georgia and when I got to Penn Station I was supposed to take the subway “….over to Grand Central Station and continue on to Portchester in Westchester County”.

That folded up twenty my mother pinned in my pocket rubbed up against my chest in a most annoying way.

The next morning when the train arrived at Pennsylvania Station, this guy saw me standing there with a slightly-confused look on my fifteen-year-old face and came over to help.

“Where’re you goin’?” he wanted to know.

“Grand Central Station”, I proudly answered.

“Follow me,” he said, as he grabbed my one suitcase and led me away.

I had to struggle to keep up as we dodged crowds coming toward us in the long white-tiled passageway, but I remember thinking at the time that it was pretty nice of him to have a subway token ready to put in the subway turnstile for me.

We took the “shuttle” over a couple of stops and then got off at The Grand Central Station Platform.

He put my suitcase down and just stood there looking at me.

“Uhm….what do I owe you….?? “, I asked.

“Pay me anything you want,” he said.